Created on 2026-05-13 23:35
Published on 2026-05-14 11:00
Eight years. Sixteen CTOs and Technical Operations leaders. One operating model. Free.
By Alex Cooke | Phase 3 Search | May 14, 2026
Today is Phase 3 Search’s eight-year anniversary, and today we publish the CTO Mandate Framework.
The framework defines the five lenses through which boards should evaluate technical leadership at every stage of company development. It names the dimension of risk each lens governs. It includes a calibration tool boards can use to surface disagreement about emphasis at their company’s current stage. It includes the deflection-resistant questions boards should be able to ask. It includes hard gates that should apply before any major capital event.
Download it here: cto-mandate-framework.html
Free. Email gate. The offer to help when you are ready.
The framework would not exist without the CTOs and Technical Operations leaders who reviewed it, pressure-tested it, contributed case patterns from their own programs, and corrected language that did not match the operating reality. By name:
Patrick Y. Yang, PhD, Joanne Tzouvalopoulos Beck Timothy Maines, Susan Abu-Absi, John Stubenrauch, Hari Pujar, Nur Nicholson, Jay Stout, Boyd Spencer, Ian B. Wilcox, Peter Thompson, Bryan Gillis, MBA, LSSBB, José Manuel (Manny) Otero, Kyle Haraldsen, Daniel Couto, Aaron Vernon and the 100s of other CMC leaders that I have spoken with over the last 8 years.
Between them they have led organizations from pre-IND startups through Fortune 100 commercial operations, launched upwards of 120 commercial products, and absorbed the operational scars that most board frameworks try to abstract away. This framework is theirs as much as it is ours and it would be nothing without the hours of feedback they provided.
Eight years ago I started Phase 3 Search to honor my older brother William, who died at fifteen of bacterial meningitis. The thesis of the firm has been simple from the first day: the right technical leader in the right seat changes whether medicines reach patients. Everything I have built since has been an attempt to make that thesis operable at the board level.
This framework is the most concrete version of that work I have ever produced. It is the operating model boards can use to govern CMC and Quality the way they already govern clinical, commercial, and financial risk. It is what eight years of placing CTOs, SVPs of Technical Operations, VPs and and Directors of CMC, and Heads of Quality has taught us about what the role actually requires and how boards can evaluate it.
It is free because the value of getting it right is not financial. It is in the population of patients who continue to wait for therapies that clear the science and fail on operations.
If you sit on a biopharma board and the CMC update at your last meeting felt thinner than the clinical update, the framework is for you. If you are a CEO whose board has not yet asked the right CMCQ question, the framework is for you. If you are a CTO, SVP of Technical Operations, VP of CMC, or Head of Quality who has been carrying the operational reality alone, the framework is for you. If you are an investor pricing CMCQ risk with gut checks, the framework is for you.
Download: cto-mandate-framework.html
The case for governing technical operations at the board level has been settled in this audience over the last year. Today the operating model is in your hands.
So, let’s go do some good with it.
Alex
Founder and CEO, Phase 3 Search
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